Social Trust Fosters an Ability to Help Those in Need: Jewish Refugees in the Nazi Era

Abstract:     
An ignored aspect of efforts to save Jewish citizens in occupied Europe during World War II is that any large-scale rescue constitutes a collective action problem. Due to Nazi occupation, no formal institutions contributed to solving this problem. Exploring the differences in rescue rates across all 30 occupied countries shows that the informal institution of social trust strongly affected rescue rates.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 37

Keywords: Social trust, institutional quality, path dependence

JEL Classification: Z13, P16, N43

working papers series